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Chapter Text

October, 1912

Edwin Courcey leaned his head against the wall as the telephone line disconnected with a sharp click; his hands were shaking so badly that it took him three tries to replace the receiver in its cradle. He hardly registered Robin and Adelaide's conversation stuttering to a halt behind him in the parlour of the townhouse they all shared, hardly noticed Robin hurrying to his side. All of a sudden, Edwin's legs refused to hold him up anymore and he sank to the floor.

Robin had hold of Edwin’s hand and brushed Edwin’s cheek with his fingertips; Robin's hands felt peculiarly hot, as if Edwin’s skin had turned to ice or Robin’s become fire.

‘What is it? What’s happened, Edwin love?’ Robin’s voice came to him as if from a great distance, as Edwin tried to make sense of his sister’s words still reverberating inside his head. It was like trying to decipher Old French: ‘She’s dead, Win. Mother’s dead.’

It couldn’t be. Edwin’s blood had been replaced with cement, his heart had ceased beating, his lungs refused to inflate. Addy was there too, kneeling beside him, exchanging distressed looks with Robin that Edwin hardly registered.

Abruptly, Edwin’s heart gave a painful squeeze, reminding him that, however unwillingly, he still lived; he drew a shaky breath and exhaled slowly. ‘She’s dead.’

Robin’s eyes closed briefly. Edwin didn’t need to say who. With that unerring instinct for what Edwin needed, Robin drew Edwin into his arms and held him while he shook, unable to cry, unable to think as guilt and loss battered at him from all sides, warring with disbelief that told him it was just a prank of Belinda’s. Even though he knew Bel wouldn’t joke about something like that.

‘I should’ve been there. I should’ve gone.’ Edwin’s voice was barely a whisper. He’d meant to; as soon as Bel had told him how unwell their mother was, he’d planned a visit. Robin was to accompany him to Penhallick for an extended stay, but they’d both needed a few days to sort things with the Assembly, and the fledgling magical university.

‘You couldn’t have known, love,’ Robin said quietly.

Edwin stared at the carpet, patterned in a brilliant turquoise that reminded Edwin of peacocks. His mother liked bright colours. He could see how the individual fibres were woven together into twists, leaving tiny gaps the foot wasn’t aware of when treading on it; he trailed a hand over it absently.

'When she couldn’t come to the telephone yesterday, I should have known.’ Surely he should have felt it, the moment when his beloved mother died, even if he hadn’t known it was coming? Even at this distance? Just as he would know the moment Robin left this world. Or Addy, for that matter.

‘How could you have known it wasn’t her melancholy?’ Robin caressed Edwin’s cheek; Edwin resisted the urge to pull away.

‘You didn’t… see it, did you?’

‘No. I would’ve told you if I had.’

Edwin became aware of Adelaide kneeling beside them again. He’d vaguely heard her speaking earlier, far above their heads, but it had been no more than a background buzz.

‘I’ve booked us on the ten o’clock train tomorrow morning,’ Addy said. ‘Kitty doesn’t want to burden you with a screaming baby and a possibly even louder toddler at the funeral, but she sends her regards. Maud and Vi will come direct from Cambridge tomorrow as well, if you want them to.’ She paused. ‘Should I tell Jack and Alan?’

Robin, Adelaide, Edwin, Maud, Violet, Alan and Jack. A stronger glue than circumstance still held their unlikely crew together, with semi-regular invitations for everyone to reunite at one residence or another from Robin and Addy, Maud, and – somewhat to Edwin’s surprise – Jack. And to his even greater surprise, Edwin found that he didn’t mind. No, that was a lie. He actually liked being around these people, most of the time, especially as they would let him be alone with a book when he needed to and not twit him about it. Not in a nasty way, at least.

Right now, though… In a strange way, Jack was the only one who might properly understand, having survived a devastating loss of his own. Still, though Jack was a lot less unpleasant to be around these days (in part thanks to Alan Ross), Edwin had had his fill of being vulnerable in front of the man.

‘Tell them, but…’

Adelaide nodded briskly. ‘I’ll give them a diplomatic reason not to come.’

Robin drew Edwin to his feet and led him to a chair, Edwin’s body following mechanically. How was Edwin supposed to do this? How was he supposed to stand up and walk around and talk like a human being and pack and travel to his family’s estate when his entire body felt like an automaton that badly needed winding?

With her usual efficiency, Addy organised everything for the journey, leaving Robin to organise Edwin. He coaxed Edwin to eat and bathe, which Edwin did mostly just to ease the worry on Robin’s face. To keep breathing. He should have been there.

*

It was a dreary Autumn day as the train pulled away from London, and Edwin watched raindrops chase each other down the windowpane, imagining them in a race as he had often done as a child. A book lay open in his lap, but the words just danced around on the page when he tried to read it. Robin and Adelaide spoke in low voices; Edwin let it wash over him like the rain.

They had the compartment to themselves – Adelaide sitting opposite and Robin beside him – so Robin kept a comforting hand on Edwin’s thigh, letting it drift up to caress his knee and back again with a nonchalance so studied it was painfully obvious. At least, Edwin knew it should be comforting, but he observed from a distance as if it were someone else’s leg. A barrier seemed to have erected itself between the sensations of his body and Edwin himself; he was aware of the touch and its intention to soothe, but it was the difference between looking at a page of musical notation and hearing a sonata.

On the steps of Penhallick House, an aversion almost as strong as the warding at Sutton stopped Edwin. The house had held nothing but misery his entire life, save for her, and it loomed forbidding above him.

But that wasn’t actually true. There were those first days here with Robin. Their only true fight as well, but above all that first, blossoming awareness that his life could be something else. That Edwin could be something else.

And Penhallick had always welcomed him, yearned after him like a puppy trying to set its wet nose in his hand, which Edwin had kept drawing away. As he would from a real puppy, he supposed, should one have occasion to try. Until finally he’d realised what the house wanted and gave it his own oath, his own blood.

Now, Penhallick sensed Edwin’s misery and shared it, wounded by its lady’s death as her son was, offering its own attempt at comfort. Edwin dropped to one knee and pressed his palm to the ground to offer what little he could in return. Penhallick’s magic thrummed more strongly than he remembered.

When Edwin straightened, Robin’s hand came to rest gently in the small of his back, steadying him as only Robin could. Edwin cast a glance over his shoulder, though he couldn’t manage a smile even for Robin. It probably wouldn’t have been reassuring, anyway, but Robin was an expert in interpreting Edwin’s glances.

Mourning didn’t suit Belinda. When she appeared in the hall behind the butler, she looked like a photograph of herself, her face too sombre, skin too pale, eyes too wide and with dark circles under them like bruises. Edwin could only imagine how much worse he looked, though the contrast would be much less noticeable

Her expression didn’t change as she took in the three of them. ‘You’d best come inside, Win.’

‘Edwin,’ said Robin and Adelaide together. Belinda blinked at them both over Edwin’s shoulder, as if she’d never heard his name before.

‘Edwin,’ she said with a small shrug, and retreated into the house. Edwin couldn’t have been more surprised if his sister had recited The Odyssey in Homerian Greek.

Robin and Adelaide had been assigned the room next to Edwin’s, as usual, though possibly Bel guessed that Robin wouldn’t be sleeping there. Indeed, the footman had hardly closed the door behind him after depositing Edwin’s luggage when there was a light knock, and the soft snick of the door opening again. Only one person was allowed to do that.

Robin hadn’t bothered to change out of his travelling clothes. Watching Robin run a hand over the wallpaper as he entered the room, Edwin recalled how he'd introduced Robin to his mother that first time at Penhallick, how she’d brightened under Robin’s attention, at his sincere appreciation for how she’d moulded the place to her particular style. How he’d made her really, really smile.

Robin sat on the bed next to Edwin. Mother had always liked Robin, though if she had ever known exactly what he was to her son, she’d never said anything about it. Edwin liked to think she’d be happy for them. He’d given her so many secrets over the years, but never this one. As it clawed at his heart, he recognised a deep-seated fear of watching the light fade from her face, having her frail hand draw away from him, if he’d ever told her that last, enormous secret. He was a coward. And now he would never know.

Edwin broke. A cry that was half-way to a keen burst out of him, and the next instant Robin was wrapping Edwin in strong arms as Edwin pressed his face into Robin’s chest, his whole body wracked with ugly sobs he could no longer contain. Grief and guilt and loss and shame tore at him with vast claws, shredding his heart, his soul, his very being.

Robin’s face was buried in Edwin’s hair, and he murmured softly, ‘I know, love, I’m here. I’m here,’ as he let Edwin cry. Not ‘It’s alright’. Robin never lied.

When Edwin eventually drew back, he saw Robin’s face was wet with tears as well. Edwin reached up a hand to cup his cheek; Robin leaned into the touch. Edwin felt drained, spent, as if a vast sea of emotions he hadn’t known he contained had leeched out of him along with the tears. The front of Robin’s shirt and waistcoat were both soaked through, but Robin seemed unaware of it.

‘I must look a right mess.’ Edwin’s voice cracked; his throat was parched as if he’d been lecturing for four hours straight at the university. Robin hurried over to the sideboard and picked up the water jug, hesitated a moment, then took a decanter in the other hand, holding them both up.

Edwin pointed to the decanter and Robin poured them each a glass. As Edwin sipped, Robin touched Edwin’s cheek with the back of a gentle hand, rubbed his thumb over Edwin’s cheekbone, which was still damp.

‘I love you, Edwin Courcey. And you will always be beautiful to me.’

Chapter Text

Belinda sat alone in the parlour when Edwin and Robin entered, staring desultorily out the window at yet another grey day.

‘Where’s Charlie?’ Edwin asked.

‘Afternoon, Bel,’ Robin said.

‘Yes, afternoon Bel,’ Edwin echoed.

Belinda glanced up. ‘Oh, he’s off walking or shooting or something. I don’t know.’ She eyed Edwin sideways. ‘I’m surprised you could take the time away from your very important work, W- Edwin.’

Edwin shrugged that off. Hearing his name on Belinda’s lips was still startling in its novelty. It was hardly a surprise that with the sting gone from her usual genre of insults, she’d move on to something else. He’d held out a hope that with Walt gone they could find some other way to exist as siblings, but it seemed to be a vain one.

Edwin sat on the sofa near his sister, Robin claiming the place beside him so their legs just touched, casually, as much contact as they allowed themselves in such company. Edwin put his hands on his thighs and stared awkwardly at the ornate and useless vase in its niche on the opposite wall. Though he really did hate Bel’s set, at least he knew how to be around them. No-one expected him to start any conversations, just exist as the butt of their oh-so-funny jokes.

‘How did-’ he cleared his throat. ‘How did it happen?’

‘Quietly.’

Edwin closed his eyes. ‘How like her.’ His mother was never one to make a fuss, even in her darkest moments. She'd never wanted to be a burden on anyone. Tears threatened; he felt Robin’s hand pressing gently on his back, and blinked rapidly. Bel was looking the other way.

‘She was frightfully ill for days, of course, with a fever and everything,’ Belinda went on. ‘But yesterday morning, she said to the maid she wanted to rest for a while, then when the woman went to bring in her luncheon, she wouldn't rouse.’ Belinda made a face. ‘You should have heard the woman scream, ah, Edwin. Anyway, the doctor came, and he said the fever had likely sapped her strength, and as she was so weak to start with her heart gave out. Or something like that.’

As if the details didn't really matter.

At least it had been peaceful, if lonely.

‘Anyway, everything’s all arranged, the photographer’s coming tomorrow and the funeral will be the day after that.’

‘Wait, what? Photographer? Whatever for?’

Belinda gave him one of her 'I can’t believe you can be this stupid' looks. ‘To take a photograph, of course.’

Robin’s hand stilled on Edwin’s back. Edwin had heard of people doing it, but he'd thought the practice had been largely laid to rest with the century. It seemed perverse, obscene, to preserve a caricature of life like that.

‘You can't, Bel’ he began. 'It's-'

‘I don’t care what you think! How else am I to remember her face?’

For the first time, Edwin thought Belinda might be close to having a normal feeling about this.

You could’ve spent more time with her, he thought, but that was hardly fair. Guilt bubbled again. Letters and telephone calls, yes, but Edwin’s visits had been selfishly rare. Belinda was there all the time, and though she rarely thought to look in on their mother, she had still probably seen more of her than Edwin.

‘Anyway. It’s all been decided. There’ll be flowers and everything in the photograph. Then Father’s arranged for an open carriage to take her to the church, and one for us, of course.’ She eyed Robin dubiously. ‘Are any more of your friends coming?’

Edwin started to say, ‘No,’ then, ‘Maud and Violet are coming from Cambridge. And Jack Alston and Alan Ross.’ He felt Robin’s start of surprise and pressed his leg against Robin’s. Adelaide would arrange it. If he had to be part of a public spectacle, at least he could be surrounded by people he actually cared about. And though he didn’t like to admit it, that included Jack.

‘That’s so like you, inviting people and not telling anyone.’

‘I’ll give you a week’s notice next time. Christ, Bel, she only died yesterday!’ Belinda’s eyes widened. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.

'We can organise our own carriages,' Robin put in, and Edwin nodded.

‘Anyway. She’s in her room if you want to see her.’ Belinda turned away; the audience was at an end. Edwin exchanged a glance with Robin, and they both stood.

‘Er, we’ll see you at dinner,’ Robin said.

Belinda nodded without looking at him.

Once they were alone in the corridor, Edwin leaned against the wall, Robin glanced around furtively, then laid his hands on Edwin’s waist; Edwin rested his head on Robin’s shoulder, let Robin draw him into his arms.

‘Do you want to see her now?’ Robin asked. Edwin nodded. ‘Do you want me to come?’

Edwin hesitated, then raised his head. ‘Will you wait outside?’

‘Of course.’

Robin brushed his lips with a kiss.

When Edwin pushed open the door to his mother’s room, her maid Annie sat by the bed, face pale above the mourning black and eyes reddened. She bobbed a curtsey and headed for the door, then paused by the writing table, her hand on a large stack of papers loosely tied with ribbon.

‘These are yours, Mr Courcey, if you’d like them back?’ Edwin nodded absently. He could worry about whatever it was later. For now, the prone figure on the bed occupied all of his thoughts.

‘Just give them to Robin,’ he said absently. The door snicked softly closed behind her. The chemical smell of embalming fluid hung in the air and made his nose twitch, but he ignored it. He shivered at the chill coming from the open window.

It was as if Mother had dressed for a ball and then lain down just for a moment, her hair perfectly coiffed, clothed in an elaborate gown of delicate blues and greens that she’d always liked but never had occasion to wear. Annie had done well. He’d never known death to be like this: a cloying stillness that turned the air to jelly. The other deaths he’d seen – the one he’d caused – had been violent, sudden, hot, and he'd never seen the bodies laid out.

When he screwed up the courage to look at her face, it was still her, eyes closed as if in sleep, her expression peaceful as if all her pain had vanished. As it had. Yet he felt a deep certainty that if he stretched out a hand and touched her, her flesh would be glass, or ice.

With something like a whimper, he sank to the floor, leaning against the bed, summoning the perfect, sensory memory of resting his head against her thin legs while she ran gnarled fingers through his hair. The memory felt heavier than usual. He wrapped his arms tightly around his knees.

‘Can I give you a secret?’ he whispered into the stillness.

I love secrets, she said in his mind, as she had a hundred times before. And he gave her Robin, gave her all the things he’d so desperately wanted to share with the one person who’d always always loved him. Only he’d been so terrified that that love had come with a condition. That this part of him that defined so much of who he was, she could not love.

He put his head down and wept. It wasn’t the tearing agony of raw grief, but the quiet sobs of an unloved, lonely child. He had no idea how long he sat there in the dim quiet, but eventually he stretched cramped limbs, blew her a kiss, and went out.

Robin straightened from where he leant against the wall opposite, waiting just as he had years earlier while Edwin had told his mother another secret. Only this time, Robin already knew all Edwin's secrets. Robin stretched out a hand and Edwin took it, let Robin draw him in close, pressed his face into the warmth of Robin's neck.

‘I wish I’d told her about you,’ Edwin said eventually.

‘Did she ever say anything? About the subject in general, I mean, not about you, or me.’

Edwin eyed him askance. ‘Did your parents talk about it?’

Robin rubbed a hand over his jaw. ‘Well no, I suppose not. Not the sort of conversation for polite company.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Would she have guessed?’

‘I honestly don’t know.’ Certainly, Annie had kept her lady abreast of all the household news, and at least some of Bel’s set knew about Edwin’s predilections in the general sense if not the particular. Billy at least wasn't about to tell anyone. But somehow he doubted that the servant gossip would extend so far as to share that sort of thing with the house’s lady. As Robin had said, it wasn’t the conversation for polite company.

‘I just can’t help but wonder whether she…’ Edwin’s voice sounded cracked and broken to his own ears, and he couldn’t bring himself to go on.

‘…whether she would have accepted it if she had,’ Robin finished for him. Edwin nodded, his face pressed firmly into Robin’s shoulder, hiding. Robin’s arms tightened around him, and Edwin felt the tears seeping out of him again.

Robin didn’t say anything for a long time, giving Edwin’s concerns the serious consideration he always did. Robin knew about having unfinished business with parents.

‘I can’t say I knew your mother very well,’ Robin said eventually. ‘But I do know one thing: she loved you, more than anything. It shone out of her when she looked at you, it bled from her when she couldn’t protect you from Walt, or your father, or Belinda. And while I can’t say as she would have welcomed me as her son-in-law on the instant, I am quite sure that, given time, she would have accepted it.’

Edwin raised his head. Robin’s face was absolutely sincere. It was almost enough to make Edwin smile. There was nothing Edwin could ever, ever have done to deserve this man.

‘Oh, your mother’s maid gave me these.’ Robin pointed to the stack of papers Edwin had seen on the writing desk, an age ago.

‘Oh?’

‘I think it’s the letters you wrote her. Apparently, there’s a lot more. The maid will deliver the rest to your room, later.’ Edwin nodded dumbly. He bent down and leafed through the first few; as far as he could tell, every letter he’d ever written her was arranged in chronological order, some bearing the marks of frequently handling. His hand shook.

Edwin had kept all of her letters, of course, safely in the Rose Study at Sutton. It was a much smaller stack, but arranged with similar care and read many times over. He’d never expected she’d done the same. A lump rose in his throat.

Robin put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I suppose we’d better get cleaned up and dress for dinner.’

‘Yes.’

‘And I’ll ask Addy to summon the troops.’ Edwin felt the ghost of a smile cross his face. Robin knew him too well.

*

Edwin refused to have anything to do with the grisly photograph, stubbornly haunting the library with Robin and Addy instead, to be joined by Maud, Violet, Jack and Alan later that evening. Nobody bothered with inanities like 'how are you?' or ‘sorry for your loss’, and nobody tried to shake his hand or hug him. Well, except Maud, and at least she’d asked first. She’d looked so forlorn that he couldn’t refuse her. It hadn’t been too bad. Instead, they'd brought small things that might mean something to Edwin. Alan handed him a book Len Geiger had set aside for him. Violet handed around a basket of buns from a cake shop Edwin particularly liked, adding that she'd had 'the rest' sent to the kitchen. Jack, all people, had taken it upon himself to cancel Edwin's university classes or arrange for substitutes where he could.

When Edwin wasn't watching, these people had inserted themselves into the slots of his life that would ordinarily be occupied by family, that the ones he had been born with had failed so spectacularly to fill.

The next morning, when he saw the open topped funeral carriages arrayed before the front steps, he nearly turned on his heel and refused to join the procession.

It was Robin, of course, who convinced him. ‘Love, if you really don’t want to go, I’ll knock clean out anyone who tries to make you. But there’s a, what’s the word. There’s a closing off to a funeral, like when you finish a book. There’s something final about throwing dirt into a coffin.’ Robin’s gaze grew distant, thinking of his own parents’ funeral. ‘It doesn’t fix everything. Maybe it doesn’t fix anything, but it helps a little to carry on.’

Perhaps that was the problem, the finality of it all and the carrying on. He didn't know how to go on without her in his life. That and being made into a public spectacle for the whole countryside to stare at, as if they gave a damn about the woman about to be buried.

Still, as Robin was usually right about this sort of thing, he’d squeezed in between Robin and Addy in the third carriage, with Maud and Violet opposite, as shielded from the outside world as he could be in a fucking a parade. At least it wasn’t actually raining. His father and sister rode with Charlie up ahead, while Jack and Alan were somewhere behind with some of Bel’s set. He wasn't sure whom he should feel sorry for, there.

The funeral was interminable, but it did eventually pass, a whirl of faces and speeches about heaven, and condolences from people who probably hadn’t seen his mother in ten years or more, come to pay their respects now she was finally gone and didn’t need them to care anymore.

He’d almost cracked, casting a handful of dirt into the grave, but Robin and Addy held him together. As he turned away, he very carefully didn’t look at the next headstone along. It occurred to him he had no idea how many lies were carved on that stone, and he didn’t want to know. Edwin hadn’t mourned Walt when he died and he wasn’t about to start now. The very thought of him still made Edwin’s skin crawl. It was a terrible thing to be glad your brother was dead, but Edwin was.

On the carriage ride back to Penhallick, Robin asked him, ‘What do you want to do now?’ There would be a wake in the downstairs parlour, of course, full of those people who probably hadn’t even thought about Florence Courcey in years.

‘To go to the library.’

‘With all of us?’ Robin asked. Edwin nodded. To lose himself in a book, yes, but surrounded by those he cared about, and who, somehow, cared a damn about him in return. His real family.

He wanted more than anything to rest his head on Robin’s shoulder, but he was all too aware of the eyes watching them. Robin slipped a surreptitious arm around his waist anyway, and Addy put her head on Edwin’s shoulder. It still surprised Edwin how easily she had become one of the three people whose touch Edwin welcomed, who maintained his sense of being in the world, rather than jolting him out of it or crossing a boundary. Not three any longer. He sucked in a breath, and Robin’s fingers pressed slightly into his side.

No-one would think it indecorous for Adelaide to offer comfort to her husband’s particular friend, not with that husband sitting right there. In a very real sense, of course, Edwin was her husband as well – and Robin’s, according to Thornley Hall and Sutton both – but only a select few knew about those particular oaths. All but two of them sat in this carriage.

Penhallick was different of course, not Edwin’s in the same way. Only…

‘Fuck. Oh, bloody sodding hell,’ Edwin said, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead. ‘Mine to tend and mine to mend.’ He’d been planning to invite them all to Sutton where they could relax and be themselves, not have to pretend to be ‘just good friends’. Not have to sneak back to their assigned rooms each morning, before the rest of the household woke.

But the land needed him. It somehow hadn’t occurred to him before, not in two years, but with Walt dead, Edwin was now the heir, which made it his responsibility to stay. Mourn with the house, and help it heal. Belinda surely wouldn’t. Help it heal, and let it help him.

Edwin rested his head on Adelaide’s briefly. ‘I wanted you all to come to Sutton, but I have to stay on here, for the land. You can all make your way home, I suppose.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly!’ Maud said. ‘Of course we’ll stay.’

‘But with father and Belinda and her wretched friends about you’ll have a miserable time of it.’

‘It’s a wake, Edwin dearest, not a festival.’ A dimple appeared in Maud’s cheek. ‘And besides, haven’t you seen the effect Hawthorn is having on your sister and that lot? And your father, too for that matter.’ Her smile turned arch, and she dropped her voice in case the driver was listening. ‘We could shout pornography from the rooftops, or hold an orgy in the front parlour, and none of them would bat an eyelid!’

‘I never thought I’d have cause to be grateful for inviting Jack anywhere,’ Edwin murmured. It wasn’t true, and they all knew it. After a quick glance around to check that no-one was watching, Robin raised Edwin’s hand to his lips and kissed it.

*

The others stayed on a week before scattering to their own lives, all except Robin of course. In their presence, Edwin could let their banter and squabbles and chatter flow over and around him as he sat curled up with a book, or paced, or simply sat and remembered. He could lift his head and join in when he wanted and keep to himself when he didn’t. They made no demands on him, save Robin and Addy insisting that he eat, and Robin asking that he come to bed to be held and kissed and fucked if he wanted it. Those were demands he could handle.

Watching Jack come over all Baron Hawthorn with Edwin’s family almost brought a smile to Edwin’s face, too; the way his sister’s set eyed Jack as if his first act as Earl of Cheetham were bound to be casting them out of magical society or throwing them off the roof of Penhallick gave Edwin a perverse sense of delight. Jack, of course, wouldn’t do anything of the sort. Probably.

Robin accompanied Edwin as he walked the grounds each day, which involved spending far more time out of doors than Edwin was truly comfortable with. They spoke little, sometimes walking arm in arm or close enough to just touch, if there were people around. They’d visited the bees, and Edwin had given them his marriages and his mother’s death. Almost as an afterthought he’d added Kitty’s new baby. He was Uncle Edwin, after all.

Each day as he walked, sharing that wordless sense of loss with the land set a fragile spark of returning life in his heart, knowing he wasn’t the only one who’d truly loved her. And she had loved him. He was sure of it.

Now that his fear had been brought out into the light, Edwin could see that he’d been carrying it a long, long time, ever since he first realised what his childish feelings towards Jack Alston meant. Robin had given him hope.

Though in dark moments the doubt might rear its head again, Edwin would always have the strength of Robin’s belief. And the knowledge that despite all his flaws and all the secrets she'd known about, his mother had still loved him.